Chapter 6: The Morning Everything Moved
The formal notification arrived at Gary's house on a Thursday.
I didn't know that until Katherine told me.
She had started coming over in the mornings.
Not every morning, but often enough that I had begun leaving the kettle on.
She never stayed long.
She would sit at the kitchen table with her tea, say a few things, and leave before the kids came downstairs.
I wasn't sure what to make of it.
I wasn't sure she was either.
That Thursday she arrived earlier than usual.
Her face was tight.
"It came," she said, before she even sat down.
I poured her tea.
"The notification?"
"A letter.
Official county letterhead." She sat down heavily.
"He read it in the kitchen and then he went upstairs and closed the door and he hasn't come down."
I set the mug in front of her.
"Katherine," I said carefully.
"What does Gary say happened?
With the wall?"
She looked at her hands.
"He says the subcontractor told him the work was done.
He says he signed off based on what he was told."
"Do you believe him?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know what I believe anymore."
"That's an honest answer."
She looked up at me.
"Are you going to testify?
If it goes further?"
"I haven't been asked to," I said.
"And I don't have direct knowledge of the wall.
I only have what Diane found in the records."
"But Diane will testify."
"That's between Diane and the ethics board."
Katherine wrapped her hands around the mug.
"He's not a bad man," she said.
"He's just — he got into things that got bigger than he expected and he didn't know how to get out."
"That might be true," I said.
"It doesn't change what the records show."
She nodded slowly.
She knew that.
We sat quietly for a moment.
"The contractor called me yesterday," I said.
"The pool restoration is scheduled to start Monday.
They say it'll take about three weeks."
Something moved across Katherine's face.
Not quite relief.
Something more complicated.
"I'm glad," she said.
And then: "I'm sorry.
For all of it.
The pool.
The gnomes.
The roses.
All the years of picking at you for no reason." She paused.
"You never did anything to me."
"No," I said.
"I didn't."
"I think I was jealous of you," she said quietly.
"Your kids.
The way your house felt.
Even before your husband passed — there was something in your house that mine never had.
I didn't know how to be near it."
I looked at her for a long moment.
"What was it?" I asked.
She thought about it.
"It felt like people actually wanted to be there."
The kettle clicked off.
Neither of us moved.
"You could build that," I said finally.
"It's not too late."
She looked at me as if I'd said something in a language she was still learning.
She left a few minutes later.
I watched her cross the yard toward her house.
At the door, she stopped.
She turned back.
"The gnomes," she said.
"I actually thought they were charming.
I just didn't know how to say so."
She went inside.
I stood at my window for a moment longer.
Then my phone rang.
It was Diane.
"Gary's attorney filed a counter-response to the ethics complaint this morning," she said.
"They're claiming the subcontractor falsified the completion records without Gary's knowledge.
They're naming the subcontractor."
"Is that credible?"
"It might be partially true," she said.
"But here's the problem.
The contribution to the commissioner's fund — that one is entirely Gary's.
No subcontractor.
No third party.
That one is his signature, his account, and his timing."
"So the wall might be complicated," I said.
"But the permit isn't."
"Correct.
And the ethics board knows the difference."
I looked out at the backyard.
The gray concrete sat in the pool like something that didn't belong there.
Three more days until Monday.
"Diane," I said.
"Is there anything else I should know?"
A pause.
"Gary's attorney made one more call this morning," she said.
"Not to me.
To the county assessor's office.
To the employee who filed the complaint."
My hand tightened on the phone.
May you like
"What kind of call?"
"The kind," Diane said carefully, "that she's now reported as an attempt to discourage her cooperation."
